Six or seven years ago, a young sea bird flew into our kitchen window just as we were about to sit down for dinner on Christmas Day.
It was a bit stunned but eventually recovered and flew off. I'm really ignorant with regard to nature and have bought a book of birds for use when out walking with the kids. After dinner I consulted the book to see what the bird was, and narrowed it down to a couple.
Now it may well have been a plain cormorant, but there was no way I was going to resist the opportunity, when asked "How was your Christmas?" to respond with "Well we had a little shag in the back garden on Chhristmas Day, but other than that it was fairly quiet."
(Cave Duck, Mon 13 Sep 2010, 9:20, Reply)